Large scale production of meat products such as bacon, for retail to the public, consists of cooking meat pieces which are then smoked and sliced into individual portions to be refrigerated or packaged for distribution.
In the meat products industry, up to now, it has been a normal practice to remove from the production line the slices that come from the edges of the meat piece because those slices are too irregular in shape to meet the established quality standards. Subsequently, the edge slices are either discarded or sold as a low grade product, resulting in either case in a substantial monetary loss.
A solution to this problem is to cook the meat piece into a mold to produce a meat piece of highly regular shape with the result that when sliced, all the slices will be almost identical, thus minimizing waste.
This idea is not new and it first has been publicly disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 3,638,554, granted to Scott Meat Products Ltd on Feb. 1, 1972. This patent relates to an apparatus for loading a meat piece into a shaping mold which also serves as a cooking vessel. More particularly, the apparatus comprises a loading section, coupled to the mold and using a plurality of fluid rams to elevate the meat piece at the level of the mold and then to push the meat piece in the mold.
Undeniably, this apparatus constitutes a substantial improvement over conventional techniques, however, its ability for industrial applications is questionable considering its complexity and high maintenance cost required for long term use.